Sales Tax

Privately held retailers are operating with relatively thin profit margins nearly four years after the end of the recession, according to recent data from Sageworks, a financial information company.

And some analysts say costs could go up and pinch margins even more if Congress approves the latest effort to get more retailers to collect taxes on their online sales.

Under the “Marketplace Fairness Act” approved by the Senate, states can require sellers generating more than $1 million in “remote” sales, including those via the Internet, to collect and remit to various states and local governments the jurisdictions’ taxes on those sales. Under current law, businesses must collect applicable state and local sales tax from customers only in states where the firm has a physical presence, such as a store, office or warehouse.

While the House must pass its own version of the bill and both sides would need to work out any differences, much of the debate surrounding the move has focused on the

Personality types at work

Workplace mangers and team leaders tend to have higher expectations of extraverts. People with more outgoing personalities are more likely to be stronger contributors on the job, employers assume. But when it comes to teamwork, UCLA business school professor and researcher Corinne Bendersky says that’s not necessarily the way things pan out.

In a recent study, Bendersky and Neha Parekh Shah found that people with neurotic traits exceeded their colleagues’ expectations, while extraverts more often disappointed them.

“A lot of staffing practice over-weights extraversion as a positive performance signal and sees neurotic cues as a negative performance signal,” Bendersky says. Her research shows that “those signals are not very accurate and the behaviors might not actually persist.”

Bendersky notes: neither “extravert” nor “neurotic” is used as a derogatory label here, but as an academic terms. They’re just two of the “big 5” personality dimensions that scholars rely on to describe people.

Summer's coming for everyone. For some of us it is basically already here. School's going to be out soon. And it's just over a week to Memorial Day. The challenge for the business owner is that for some businesses this heralds a slow time when sales dip and it becomes a struggle to keep the doors open. While for others. this is the busy time - the precious few months to make most of the money for the year. Either way, the challenge is that you need to maximize your sales and find more customers. We've tried to include a good set of articles below to help you out. For those of you that haven't yet taken the jump into starting your own business, you can get started with our series on starting a business - the links to the three articles that make up part four (all about naming your business) are below and you can find the links to parts 1 through 3 in them.

• The Name Game: How to pick a business name that will be successful for years to come
• The Yahoo Smart and Simple Guide to Starting a

Despite the fact that the cost of providing healthcare benefits is rising at a slower pace, organizations continue to look for ways to control healthcare costs. Anyone who administers an employer-sponsored health plan understands that the cost of healthcare coverage is more expensive for organizations that employ unhealthy people. This understanding led companies to embrace wellness programs.

Corporate wellness programs can consist of multiple approaches. Many businesses concentrate on weight loss programs for employees after they have a medical exam. Others stock vending machines with healthy snacks only. A corporation can even encourage employees to walk during break and lunch times. Other long-term strategies include newsletters that keep everyone up to date on health issues and guest speakers.

Improving employee health is vital to a successful business and its bottom line. Businesses can gain a handle on healthcare costs if their employees are healthier and make fewer trips to

Mobile Credit

More and more businesses are turning to an array of payment applications and technological devices that instantly convert sales into cash. They include Intuit GoPayments, PayPal Here, PaySimple, and Square Card Reader. The popularity of these new technologies is soaring as more and more small businesses embrace emerging mobile technology payment solutions.

PaySimple, a Denver-based company that entered the marketplace in 2006, now counts 10,000 small businesses as customers. The company saw a 50 percent increase in users last year. Others, like Flint Mobile Inc., take photos of credit cards with an iPhone and

If you buy or sell over the Internet, you likely have an opinion on The Marketplace Fairness Act. And if you’re like most Americans surveyed earlier this month, you don’t like it one bit.

The proposed law, which passed the Senate 10 days ago and now awaits vote in the House, would permit states to require some online retailers to collect appropriate local and state sales taxes. The law would only apply to sellers with at least $1 million in sales in states where they don’t have physical operations. And it would only apply to purchases made by customers in states where sales tax is already collected on similar purchases from non-online retailers.

In fact, by law, consumers are already required to pay state sales tax on their online purchases. But when online retailers don’t collect, most consumers don’t voluntarily pay, and states have a hard time enforcing the law. The argument of those who support The Marketplace Fairness Act is that passing a bill allowing states to require retailers

Infographic: The oDesk and Millennial Branding Spring 2013 Future of Work SurveyTo be an entrepreneur you need not own a business, risk your personal capital, create jobs, or even work your rump off. You just need to have a certain mindset. At least that’s the definition of entrepreneurship offered by the expanding freelance workforce.

Survey results released today by the consulting firm Millennial Branding and oDesk reveal that 90 percent of independent workers and “solopreneurs” associate “being an entrepreneur” with having a mindset to “see opportunities, take risks, and make things happen,” rather than with having actually started a company. In fact, more than half of freelancers consider themselves to be entrepreneurs, according to survey results.

On behalf of Millennial Branding and oDesk, Genesis Research Associates surveyed more than 3,000 freelancers worldwide—over 60 percent of them between 19 and 30 years old (a.k.a. “millennials” or members of Generation Y) to examine their perspectives on the future of work. Small business owners might say their

Business Debt

Debt Service Coverage

One of the most basic measures of a company’s creditworthiness is the Debt Service Coverage ratio, which shows a firm’s ongoing ability to keep in control both debt and interest. The Debt Service Coverage Ratio, defined as EBITDA divided by a firm’s current portion of long-term debt and interest expense, is an extremely important metric for predicting default. More than half of the banks and asset-based lenders in the Pepperdine Capital Markets survey said this statistic was important or very important in their lending decisions.

Given its role in lending decisions, an improvement to the Debt Service Coverage Ratio can be beneficial, and it can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Cutting expenses may boost the firm’s EBITDA, even if debt and interest payments stay the same.

But a business can also improve this ratio by focusing on debt and interest expense. Short of extending the term of a loan or refinancing to lower interest expense, one effective way of tackling